Choreographed scenes based on documented folktales from Palestine, the film aims to create a new aesthetic form to re-awaken latent stories based around water wells and their connection to communal rituals around notions of disappearance, mourning, and death. our songs were ready for all the wars to come explores the critical stance of ‘folklore’ as a source of knowledge, and its possible connection to alternative social and representational models in Palestine. How can ‘folklore’ become a common emancipatory tool for people to overturn dominant discourses, reclaim their history and land, and rewrite reality as they know it?
The only narration in the film is a song, which is sung by Palestinian singer Maya Khaldi. Its lyrics are a collage of different folk tales. Captured through mediums of film and sound, situated stories are archived and represented, creating a context that explores the capacity of social formation, and the possibility of recalling a memory that is capable of decentralizing images of fixity; a memory that is liberated from monuments.
Cinematographies of Resistance is a multiannual program launched by Leila Topić (Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb) and Dina Pokrajac (Subversive Festival). The program is dedicated to presenting international filmmakers who create work at the intersection of contemporary art and film strategies and practices, fusing the expressive possibilities of art film, film essay and openness to experimentation. The Cinematographies of Resistance is interested in auteurial positions that seek to resist mainstream canons, with an approach that is characterized by intermediality and intertextuality, open to engage with a variety of topics. The resistance from the program’s title is manifested in the search for new models and approaches in contrast to the established ways of thinking about cinematic medium, expanded photography as well as film and multimedia art in general. As part of the Cinematographies of Resistance program, so far we have presented the works and video installations by Maud Alpi (2018), Sabina Mikelić (2019), Nicole Hewitt (2021), Jasmina Cibic (2023), Nika Autor (2023), Milica Rakić (2024) and Driant Zeneli (2025).
Noor Abed (1988, Palestine) is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker. Her practice examines notions of choreography and the imaginary relationship of individuals, creating situations where social possibilities are both rehearsed and performed. Abed attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in Νew York in 2015-16, and the Home Workspace Program (HWP) at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut 2016-17. She was a fellow at the Raw Material Company in Dakar in 2019, and in 2020, she co-founded, with Lara Khaldi, the School of Intrusions, an independent educational collective in Ramallah, Palestine. Abed was an assistant curator in documenta fifteen, Kassel 2021-22, an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam 2022-24. She was awarded the Han Nefkens Foundation/ Museu Tàpies Film Production Grant in 2022, and her film ‘A Night We Held Between’ was selected as a first-prize winner of the e-flux Film Award 2024. Abed is the Grand prize recipient of the 36th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, Her book ‘Stars at Midday’ was published by Occasional Papers in October 2024.
Screening schedule
- Pogon Jedinstvo
